Darwin for Toddlers. It's Not that Complicated.

[Cavebear]

The first line of Stranger in a Strange Land is "Once upon a time there was a Martian named Valentine Michael Smith." It doesn't "vary", people get it wrong.

And your opinion is noted.

My apologies.  Memory betrayed me...

[Baruch]

My apologies.  Memory betrayed me...

Berenstein Bears ... a nearly universal false memory.  It was Berenstain Bears.

[Gawdzilla Sama]

My apologies.  Memory betrayed me...

I have said the same thing myself, which is why I drilled it into my brain.

[Unbeliever]

Trepanning, huh? That sometimes works...

[Gawdzilla Sama]

Trepanning, huh? That sometimes works...

It's best done at home, the authorities don't need to know.

[Cavebear]

It's best done at home, the authorities don't need to know.

Simple operation these days.  Bottle of whiskey, electric drill, spade bit, towel under head.  Maybe a small vacuum cleaner...

[Unbeliever]

I see this thread is kind of old, but this seems to fit here better than elsewhere:


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aq5BK-dmtqc

[Baruch]

I see this thread is kind of old, but this seems to fit here better than elsewhere:


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aq5BK-dmtqc

No time to study science, still working out how many angels can dance on the head of a pin ;-)

[Jason78]

Carl Sagan was pretty good at explaining evolution in simple (but not simplistic) ways. I really enjoyed his discussion of samurai crabs, on the original Cosmos, though that was actually artificial selection, is was easy to see how it could apply to natural selection.

Why can't I get away with selectively breeding humans?

[Unbeliever]

You're just not rich enough.

[Hydra009]

I know it's super late to point this out, but it's not quite so simple as in the OP.

Sure, monkeys look like people (in fact, that's why it's a favorite insult of people trying to dehumanize other people - comparing them to apes/monkeys) and of course, monkeys and people are very closely related.  So similarity = relation, right?  Well, not quite.

There are tons of species that are very similar-looking but are not closely related.  This can be due to either convergent evolution (similar features due to a similar niche, not due to close relations) or mimicry (a species disguising itself as another species).

For kids, I think the best example of evolution is island giganticism.  Island species look extremely similar to mainland species, just bigger.  It doesn't take long to deduce both migration and slight genetic changes in response to the environment.  Boom.  Variation + selection = change over time.  The core concept of evolution.

[SGOS]

Sure, monkeys look like people (in fact, that's why it's a favorite insult of people trying to dehumanize other people - comparing them to apes/monkeys) and of course, monkeys and people are very closely related.  So similarity = relation, right?  Well, not quite.

There are tons of species that are very similar-looking but are not closely related.  This can be due to either convergent evolution (similar features due to a similar niche, not due to close relations) or mimicry (a species disguising itself as another species).

It's reasonable that similar environments will nurture similar adaptations.  Throw in a bit of coincidence, and we would expect similar but unrelated species, just as evolution predicts.  Darwin was a very good guesser as well as a better than average observer, but his theory still involved a lot of speculation at the time.  This tends to invite controversy.  Throw in some things that challenge religion, and the controversy is magnified to astounding proportion.

In Darwin's day, such controversy would be expected, and he faced a lot of it, both from the science community and clergy.  He could have been proven wrong eventually, except that he wasn't.  What started as a guy simply writing about what he think probably happened, turned out to be one of the most widely accepted and continually verified theories in science.

In my mind, our discovery and understanding of DNA cinched the theory, and only the most uneducated and biased voices still argue about it.

OK, I got a little off track from your comment.  But we now know monkeys and man are closely related, but the uncanny similarities were still an important tip off to invite the search for more understanding.  Although Darwin's original observations seem to focus a lot on birds.  Sometimes I think little children could have arrived at a similar conclusion about man and monkeys.  Well, maybe not a conclusion, but similar observations.  I didn't create any great theory on my first trip to the local zoo, but I remember being overwhelmed at how much monkeys looked like little people.

[Unbeliever]

I've heard the phrase "form follows function" somewhere, and I suppose there may be something to it.

[SGOS]

I've heard the phrase "form follows function" somewhere, and I suppose there may be something to it.

Frank Lloyd Wright used to say that.  I don't know if he coined it or not.

[Unbeliever]

Wikipedia says it was coined by an architect, Louis Sullivan:


https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Form_follows_function